House of Bathory(29)
Daisy dropped her jaw, making her white makeup crease. What did this guy know about her? Why was he interested?
Daisy glanced to see if anyone was listening to the conversation. There were a couple of popular girls giving them the eye, but they weren’t close enough to hear.
“And what is that crazy book with all the zoned-out pix you download?” he whispered, close enough to her she could smell his tropical fruit chewing gum.
“The Red Book.”
“It’s sick—those crazy illustrations. Wild colors. Like, was he on drugs or what?”
“He may have been ‘crazy’ when he drew them. He was exploring his psyche and his soul.”
Kyle didn’t say anything. He looked into her kohl-rimmed eyes. “I want to spend the solstice with you.”
“With me? Are you sure?”
“Yep. I’m sure.”
“Why not?” she said. Her tooth hooked over her lip, and she was trying to keep herself from smiling.
Betsy stifled a yawn. Her flight from New York had been delayed four hours due to another heavy snowstorm.
As she waited for Daisy to arrive for her session, Betsy pulled the Nine of Swords from her jacket pocket, setting it up on her desk. The image of the sobbing girl sent a shiver down her spine.
“What’s that?” said Daisy, entering silently through the door.
Betsy jumped. She snatched the card from her desk, shoving it into a drawer.
“Nothing, just…”
“It’s a tarot card, right? The Nine of Swords. Whew, watch your back, Betsy! Especially after that creepy dude broke into your house—”
“Let’s not bring that unfortunate occurrence into your therapy session,” said Betsy. “It had nothing to do with you.” She saw a beige book in her patient’s hand.
“What do you have there?”
“It’s the I-Ching,” Daisy said. “It’s like a Goth bestseller. Anyway, I read the foreword. Did you know it was written by your guy? Carl Jung?”
Betsy straightened her back.
“No. Yes! I mean, I had forgotten he wrote that.”
“I was thinking about my dreams and Jung’s theory of synchronicity,” said Daisy. “I’ve been doing a lot of research on the internet. I had no idea that Jung was so—freaking awesome.”
“So why did you bring the I-Ching?” Betsy asked. “This is your therapy hour, Daisy. Sit down.”
An enigmatic smile crossed Daisy’s face, exposing her crooked tooth. She remained standing.
“Ah, but you didn’t really tell me all there is to know about Dr. Jung,” she said. Her open palm thumped the book. “He was a fervent believer in coincidence.”
“Synchronicity,” Betsy said. “His theory of acausal connecting principles.”
“Yeah, right. That part you told me, remember?”
Had she told her?
“You told me synchronicity is like a coincidence. Like the coins and dice falling in a certain way that has almost zero probability. Or a roulette wheel hitting the same number over and over. Or the principle behind tarot cards. Meaningful coincidences. Woo-woo-woo-woo,” she said, making a comical haunted sound as she arched her black-penciled eyebrows up and down.
The conversation was unsettling. But the funny look on Daisy’s face made her psychologist laugh.
“What does any of this have to do with your therapy, Daisy?”
“You didn’t explain that this Jung guy was such a cool dude. Like he was into the occult, mandalas and Buddhism. And former lives.”
Betsy hesitated. Why did Daisy’s sudden interest in Carl Jung make her uneasy?
“He believed in exploring the unconscious, Daisy. That by examining your unconscious world, you can discover reasons for your behavior, your beliefs and fears. Jungian analysis—”
“No, he was—Goth. He believed in the spiritual world. Ghosts. Murmurs of the past…and how we are all connected.”
Betsy thought of the tarot card. She shook her head.
“Carl Jung did not believe in ghosts and he certainly was not Goth.” She straightened her posture. “He believed in the collective unconscious of the universe—”
Daisy flicked her ebony hair behind her shoulder, shaking her head vehemently. She opened the I-Ching, thrusting her finger at Jung’s foreword.
“Oh, yeah, he did, Betsy. Believe in ghosts, I mean. And collective unconscious? Hello! Totally Goth. And the wild visions—”
“Jung experienced the ‘menace of psychosis,’ as he termed it,” Betsy said carefully. “This was a very dark time for him, when he lost his grasp on reality.”
“What’s reality?” asked Daisy. “Hearing ghosts or me choking on my own spit for no reason?”